NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — The moment word broke that Cypriot lawmakers in Parliament had voted down a bailout deal that would have raided everyone's savings to prop up a collapsing banking sector, a huge cheer rose up from hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside that echoed through the building's corridors.
From the 1950s guerrilla war against British rule to Greek Cypriots' defiant refusal in 2004 to accept a U.N.-backed peace plan to reunite the island, they are used to holding their own against big opponents.
Just as quickly as Cyprus' euro area partners decided that a deposit grab was the only way out, so Cypriots decided their tiny island was ground zero in Europe's new financial scorched earth policy and that it had to be resisted at all costs.
The country's foreign minister, Ioannis Kasoulides, even acknowledged that Cypriot negotiators had contemplated exiting the euro instead of accepting their euro area partners' terms.
[...] Cyprus accepted a deal that would safeguard small savers but where depositors with more than 100,000 euros in the country's two most troubled banks would lose a big chunk of their money.
The invasion and its fallout remains an existential matter in the minds of Cypriots and it still informs many of the political and economic decisions the country and its people make.
[...] their reference to "friends" instead of "allies," which implies a more pragmatic relationship.
From the 1950s guerrilla war against British rule to Greek Cypriots' defiant refusal in 2004 to accept a U.N.-backed peace plan to reunite the island, they are used to holding their own against big opponents.
Just as quickly as Cyprus' euro area partners decided that a deposit grab was the only way out, so Cypriots decided their tiny island was ground zero in Europe's new financial scorched earth policy and that it had to be resisted at all costs.
The country's foreign minister, Ioannis Kasoulides, even acknowledged that Cypriot negotiators had contemplated exiting the euro instead of accepting their euro area partners' terms.
[...] Cyprus accepted a deal that would safeguard small savers but where depositors with more than 100,000 euros in the country's two most troubled banks would lose a big chunk of their money.
The invasion and its fallout remains an existential matter in the minds of Cypriots and it still informs many of the political and economic decisions the country and its people make.
[...] their reference to "friends" instead of "allies," which implies a more pragmatic relationship.
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